Recent Tasting Notes

I’m still not quite fully moved in to my new place, so I’m drinking whichever teas I can find… ok, that’s most of them. Haha. At least now I have a shelf to house my teas! Tea stash photo coming soon :P Anyways, I happened across the Lupicia box, which is the reason for these two teas. This one’s in a plastic baggie, so best to drink up if possible.

Anyhow, the aroma is actually rather peachy – I was surprised! I wasn’t expecting too much, to be honest. It also smells a bit floral, which is not surprising given the rose petals. Flavourwise it’s unmistakably a rooibos, though not too bad as they come. If I use a bit of imagination, I can imagine this to be a cup of hot peaches.

However, I think this will be destined for the swap pile. Someone who likes rooibos blends and/or floral blends would probably appreciate it more than me!

I tried it side by side with Bluebird’s Terry’s Tea to see which was the best chocolate orange tea. The answer: Not this one.

I steeped it for 3 minutes and the result was very bitter. Each sip left a tacky aftertaste, and it felt like my teeth were coated in… something? Not pleasant. It was simliar to that feeling you get when you eat super cheap chocolate and it’s waxy.

After the first few sips it got a bit better, but not enough for me to bother finishing the cup. Guess I’m not the only one indifferent to this one, so no hard feelings!

not a bad cup of tea…but i vastly prefer stacy’s. Not sorry to finish this one up, since i find that this one loses it’s flavours once opened…though that’s in part because of me heh. An enjoyable cup of pineapple tea…but man, i really am going to miss stacy’s version :(

having a cup of this tonight as i want to finish this up before i get the last of my pineapple oolong from Butiki. Sad part is, i for sure prefer Stacy’s version to this one. It’s juicier and way more delicious :( This one isn’t bad, but it’s just not as fresh as i want it to be.

best part about finishing up 109821309821039812 samples? i can drink any tea i want, whenever! and not feel guilty about it hahaha. I pulled this one out today since i was craving a cup of delicious pineapple goodness and i’m out of stacy’s pineapple oolong. While i also enjoy this one from lupicia, stacy’s version will be my go to version from now on. It’s just way more pineappl-y AND yay for pineapple chunks that i can eat!

So i finally got my order of this one in from Lupicia and figured i could do my mini comparison against the last of the flowery pineapple oolong that i have from stacy. Though i was fairly certain which one would end up being my favourite, i wanted to try again because my taste HAVE changed over the course of the year or so since i last had this one AND because what the hell :)

This oolong is recommended brewing at boiling temperature – SO I DID I T ANNA! it also has coconut added to it, which i generally don’t like, but don’t recall it being a weird note in this tea the last time i had it.

Brewed up, this is a very light, pineapple tea. I can detect the coconut under ths pineapple notes in this one, but rather than screaming COCONUT! they just sort of give this tea a creamy sort of flavour to it. On the whole, i am bumping my rating up on this one as it’s a much more tasty treat since i last had it.

I figured i should give this a try before i sent it off in a swap. As i suspected it’s a little too oolongy for me. BUT this is does have a nice pineapple flavour to it that i can get behind. It’s almost a creamy pineapple oolong. It’s similar to a few milk oolong i’ve tried but with the added citrus pineapple thing going on. overall, i think a lot of people would love this, as long as oolongs are their thing :)

Have just brewed a proper cup of this – 2 days ago I got distracted during the brewing process so it was seriously oversteeped… :(

This smells really sweet and creamy! Just like the strawberry milk beverage that I had when I was small. Frankly speaking the strawberry flavour seems quite artificial, but I am ok with it because it tastes pretty nice. Despite having the flavour of candy, this is hardly a tea for children because the black tea base is quite strong!

Preparation

This is my first Lupicia tea. I had no idea where to buy this brand in France and sent an email to the Lupicia USA customer service two weeks ago. Still awaiting an answer :) – Maybe I should have wrote to Lupicia Japan but I felt more confident with my English rather than trying to read the Japanese writings.
Anyway I am very lucky because while discussing with the lovely Devilish she proposed me to send me out her Lupicia’s samples !
So my samples arrived from Hong Kong yesterday and I am now sipping Arabian Nights.
I wanted to try this one first because Devilish rated it with a 100 and mentioned in her post it reminds her Morocco.

I have too a beautiful teapot from Morocco and beautiful Moroccan tea glasses but didn’t use them neither :)

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to taste these Lupicia teas ! I should say I am not disappointed at all with this first tea, I love it !

The taste definitively is pomegranate and rose to me.The tea base is so mellow, this is fantastic.I am happy there is not mint inside – I love mint but almost each time a tea gets an oriental name, we have mint inside – Oriental teas are not just mint teas – this one probes it in a yummy way !
I am also happy it is a black tea base, often to mention Orient, a green tea is used – and I prefer black teas :)

I am definitively in Morocco tonight thanks to Devilish thank you so much :)

Hmm this is the least likable tea that I’ve had this week. I don’t know what exactly is a “cute-looking tea”… the tea leaves look pretty normal to me. It has the sweet smell of candies though! Yet when brewed the sweet aroma is largely gone. I wonder if I have used too much tea leaves because the liquor smells really strong, almost like it’s roasted. The tea is fruit-flavoured (though I really can’t tell which fruits. The packet says there are mango, cranberries, raisins, etc.) but it has a tart and slightly bitter finish… :( The reason? I have just got the answer from the list of ingredients – hibiscus!!!!! No wonder…

Preparation

Lupicia has lots of fruit-flavoured blends, and a fair proportion of them re flavoured with grapes, muscat and the like. I think they are enjoyable, but sometimes they do remind me of Fanta Grape… This tea is yet another flavoured tea in the “grape spectrum”. When dried the leaves smelled intensely of Fanta Grape (hmm it should be mountain grapes, they said). I was expecting another cup that tasted like grape candy, but I was wrong this time! The grape flavour was so subtle that the sweetness and floral fragrance of the Taiwanese oolong tea base was able to stand out. To me this was a better balance between flavouring and tea base. :)

Preparation

I have been pretty lucky these days. I have had several delicious teas in a row! I guess this shows that I have been more selective in buying teas, and I begin to focus more on the quality of tea leaves rather than packaging :P

This deep-steamed sensha is amazing. Fulled-bodied, smooth, a little bit of grassy flavour that gives it a refreshing taste, and has a sweet finish. I haven’t had sencha as good as this one for so long. This is unfortunately a single tea bag from The Book of Tea (Autumn Version), which means I probably won’t be able to have this tea in the months to come after I have finished this cup…

Preparation

I went through this one pretty quickly! The curled-up little leaves smell delicious and tip so nicely into the steeper. The scent matches up with the promised ripe pineapple and coconut. My first instinct was to cold-brew this, but I believe I left it too long at 5 hours, as I found the underlying flavor of the oolong too floral and a bit bitter. Turns out I like this a lot better when it is steeped for a few minutes at about 160-170 and let cool to drinking temperature. The fruity pineapple really shines then and makes a delicious and sweet cup.

Preparation

I made this and I drank some and it’s a sipdown but I really can’t be fair to it because I feel so very terrible right now, physically and emotionally. I’m going to plead sick and go home from work after I wash out my pot, whether or not I can take sick time. I’ll make it up later if I can’t. I just can’t be here right now. I promised people to do QA database stuff today but I just can’t.

I did a little switching around of teas here because I am pretty sure I bought this one (#78) at the same time that I bought the Melon Oolong.

This is one I SHOULD be drinking since it is so wintery, but I always forget about it. Also for some reason I think it is going to be smoky, but I know it isn’t smoky, so I’m not sure what my problem is. I enjoy the tea, but I never crave it.

Preparation

Once again I have been bad about logging my teas. I had this one yesterday, and it was quite tasty. This is totally one of those teas that I never think of having, but when I do have a cup I really enjoy it. Nutty, sweet and delicious. Roasted chestnuts and that’s it; sometimes you want a simple flavored tea.

Mmm, roasty chestnuts! It’s been a long time since I had this one, but I don’t know why. It is the perfect tea for this snowy snowy day that we are having!

This isn’t a heavily flavored tea, really… it really reminds me of a nice nutty black tea with a good heap of roastiness. It’s almost like this tea was the base of that ATR Sultan’s Delight blend. Quite tasty overall.

Preparation

Another Lupicia from my recent order. I love their Chestnut Green but it has been out of stock for forever. When I saw this one on sale I went ahead and grabbed it on the strength of the Chestnut Green.

To me the dry leaf smells like thick, rich molasses and grains. Nutty, yeah, but mostly like molasses. Steeped, the nuttiness really comes out. It suddenly smells like Christmas in NYC to me, with the roasted chestnuts on the street corners. Um, yum. This is Christmas in NYC to me. It tastes just like roasted chestnuts, so if you like those this is a tea for you. Nutty, roasty, and the essence of warm. Kind of odd to be drinking on a spring day, but delicious nonetheless. I often don’t go for roasty, toasty teas, but there is something about this one that really works for me. I think it’s the whole experience. It’s not just roasted, slightly smoky tea, it’s roasted, slightly smoky chestnuts, and that’s something I can get behind. There’s no sweetness to the main sip but after a minute or so I am left with a slightly sweet taste in my mouth.

I can’t see craving this much during the summer but come fall and winter I think it will definitely see a lot of action. Now put your chestnut green back in stock, Lupicia!